A make-or-break year for Julia Gillard

Ralph Norris
is under no illusion about the challenges facing Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
.

“Any government that has to operate in a hung Parliament environment straight away has a problem as far as trying to put in place a strong agenda of change," he says. “One of the risks that we run over the next two to three years is that there won’t be the political will because of the inability to actually get consensus or a sufficient consensus to drive forward a progressive platform of change."

Even so, business leaders have criticised the Prime Minister’s leadership for failing to push a strong policy agenda that tackles key areas of concern: productivity, infrastructure, energy security and tax.

“We haven’t a lot of progress on those priorities," says
Graham Bradley
.

“There’s been partial response on a number of them. But, overall, we would have to say it’s a very mixed scorecard. There’s still a lot of debt-clearing going on from the previous regime. If you look at what most of the time has been spent on, it has been clearing up the issues left over from last year. That hasn’t moved the country ahead on a whole range of issues that we think should be high priorities."

Gillard inherited policy initiatives from her predecessor
Kevin Rudd
, such as the establishment of a national broadband network and the introduction of a minerals resource rent tax. Gillard became prime minister in June, replacing Rudd who lost the support of the Labor Party. An election in August saw Labor reclaim power after forming a minority government with the support of independents.

To be fair, Bradley says business leaders had heard “encouraging rhetoric" from the Prime Minister “about how productivity is important, about budgetary constraint". But, he says, the “time is fast approaching when we would like to see some real concrete steps taken on the agenda that matters".

Bradley says the Business Council of Australia was also encouraged that the Gillard government was listening more to business. Government became “alienated" from business under Rudd’s rule, he says.

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Norris agrees. “From my perspective, it’s been refreshing that a number of the ministers have actually reached out and wanted to talk and they wanted to make sure people like myself were aware that their doors were open," he says. “So that I found very encouraging."

John Denton says the electorate is looking for “substantive policy proposals" from the government. “It is not going to rely upon politicking within the chamber; they actually want to see a debate and also an opportunity forged for the nation," Denton says.

A former diplomat, Denton notes that contrary to expectations, the Gillard government is performing OK on foreign policy.